Murdoch isn’t the first to suggest Wall Street Journal name change

Rupert Murdoch said last week that he’s thinking about changing the name of the Wall Street Journal to simply WSJ. He isn’t the first one to consider a name change. “In 1946, a Princeton, N.J., polling firm concluded that that name was a handicap to the newspaper’s growth,” writes Christine Haughney.

Names that were considered at the time included: World’s Work, The North American Journal, Business Day, The National Journal, and Financial America.

“When [editor] Barney Kilgore had completely unfettered control, he dropped the idea of changing the name of The Journal,” says former Wall Street Journal assistant publisher Richard Tofel. “It wasn’t his idea. It was his boss’s bad idea.”